


The Beast's Tale

by Donteatacowman



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 12:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donteatacowman/pseuds/Donteatacowman
Summary: I believe we got off to a sour start, you and I.Yes, yes, I’m fully aware of how you learned the story of the Beast. A ravenous monster eager to devour the spirits of lost children in his evil lantern, correct? A bogeyman devised to frighten little ones into safety, for even if there was no Beast in the woods, there was yet starvation, and wolves, and sharp teeth and rocks and other humans who might take advantage of an innocent.Perhaps I began that way. I hardly remember, but then, is it so odd not to recall the moment of one’s birth?





	The Beast's Tale

I believe we got off to a sour start, you and I.

Yes, yes, I’m fully aware of how you learned the story of the Beast. A ravenous monster eager to devour the spirits of lost children in his evil lantern, correct? A bogeyman devised to frighten little ones into safety, for even if there was no Beast in the woods, there was yet starvation, and wolves, and sharp teeth and rocks and other humans who might take advantage of an innocent. 

Perhaps I began that way. I hardly remember, but then, is it so odd not to recall the moment of one’s birth? 

As bogeymen go, I’m relatively harmless. Laugh all you like. It’s true. I lure the lost into eternal sleep, but the forest is what breaks their spirit, grinds them into the ground, and lets them rot. Their bodies are destined to be food for the forest, be the tree oak or edelwood.

But I won’t bore you with justifications. It’s true, after all; my beautiful garden is made fertile by the suffering of lost souls. I know you won’t believe me no matter how much I extol the benefits of submission to an inevitable mortality. Prolong your suffering all you like; all will fall in the end.

So long I wandered the trees, their slavish caretaker. I could not exist without the edelwood, and they could not flourish without me. I was alone, only acknowledged by those who recognized the creaking of my lantern as a beacon of death. Yes, that symbol, the fire of my soul itself, acted as a lighthouse to some of the lost souls: a warning to leave lest they dash themselves against a rocky cliffside and sink into oblivion. Often they did not need my encouragement to die.

Still I sang to them. What can I say? I’m a creature who prides himself on efficiency.

I got my fill of entertainment by watching the human denizens of the forest, though they be few and far between. A woman lived here, a few generations ago; she joined my forest, of course. But a relative moved in much later, bringing along her husband and daughter. Their mundane day-to-day activities were all I had to watch, and it’s true, I craved their spirits in my lantern. 

I do not like the daylight. I do not like being seen. It causes me physical pain. And the wretched husband was a superstitious man, hearing of the Beast once and never again allowing his family to enter the forest at nighttime. 

But I am patient. Like the forest, I am eternal. I had all the time in the world to wait, and watch, and listen.

And there is no word of man that can restrain a woman determined.

She was mine within weeks. I could only injure, but the darkness of the forest had entered her veins. The husband himself planted her seed in my forest, where the stump now stands beside a flimsy handmade headstone.

Fear kept the family in their cabin for years. No matter. My flame burnt brightly. Edelwood oil lasts a long time if you use it correctly, and the dead woman’s tree, like her spirit, had grown strong and tall before I began to strip it of limbs for to grind.

The daughter grew older, inheriting her father’s superstition and her mother’s stubbornness. She heard my song as she grew. The forest beckoned her. One night, she listened. 

I did not make her part of my forest that night or any other. I am not all-knowing; I cannot see everything that occurs in my forest, and I cannot grasp souls who will fight to be alive. I can only encourage those who are ready to die.

But she left things behind in that forest. Her axe, sharpened and at the ready. Her cloak, red and identifiable. Enough things for her father, hurrying into the darkness behind her, to believe that she was already mine.

I have no need of living humans. I did not design to trap him. You may choose to believe me or not, but I speak the truth: my deceit was in self-defense, done only in the interest of self-preservation. 

Blinded by parental rage, the man took up the axe and struck me. If I’d known what was to happen, I would have kept my grasp on the lantern’s handle sure, no matter how much I would bleed--but I had never been so attacked, and I let it fall.

I shouted. I begged. I had never spoken to a man so, but with his foot resting on the glass of my lantern, grinding his heel against my very soul, I had no alternative. He remained intransigent, righteously angry in thinking I’d killed both his wife and daughter. 

I told him the truth: that the lantern housed a soul. I told him a lie: that the soul was his daughter’s.

He could see the human-like form inside the flame. He believed me.

He refused to return the lantern to me. 

This foolish mortal man was now in sole possession of my soul and had murderous ill will against me for both good reasons and bad ones. If my deception was ever to be revealed, I would be dead. But I would also flicker and die if the fool did not fill the lantern properly. So I struck a deal with him: I would teach him the way of the edelwood. He would allow me to supervise him, to make sure the lantern stayed lit at any cost.

I cannot fathom what he thought of my reasoning. Why would I stalk the night, seeking souls to hide inside a single flickering flame? But perhaps it made as much sense to him as my cultivation of the edelwood would have. It did not matter. He never asked.

Our partnership was born of a mutual desperation and this was the only commonality we shared. It was not always miserable. It was not always pleasant. More than once, he decided he wished to be free of the shadowy Beast haunting him from the roadside and he tried to flee. More than once, I yearned to leave the cantankerous mortal for good and tried to snatch the lantern if unattended. Neither of us prevailed.

The woodsman isolated himself, fearing what I would do to any other children of man he met, and he blamed me for his loneliness. He collected the oil in glass bottles, clumsy fingers spilling precious drops, but always fulfilling his end of the deal. And so we lived until those two children came to the Unknown--the two that became my undoing. 

I cared not for the woodsman’s company. They were not primed to submit to the forest yet, and I paid them no heed until it became evident how they were really, truly lost. There was no one in this realm who could give them escape, no way for them to reach their home, and thus without any intervention on my part they were nearly mine already. The woodsman knew this and issued a warning. But warnings from deluded old men rarely are heeded.

I have a few friends in the forest, though they be far between. I pulled a few strings, so to speak, and the two were nearly mine with their guardian left hopeless besides. My friend failed, her plans gone up in smoke, and the children escaped. Not unscathed, though. His time quickly ran out.

And yes, the eldest, Wirt, was mine. 

Gregory, the youngest, found his own way to speak with me, and once again I was thrust in the position of faustian bargain-maker. He wished to take his brother home, healthy and intact. I could not offer this, of course--perhaps Wirt could escape the sapling edelwood, but I could not send the boys home. But young Gregory ignorantly was offering me his own soul, for the probability of his hope being lost while speaking to me was high. Should I trade Wirt’s edelwood for the possibility of getting both children? 

Essentially, Gregory asked me, “double or nothing?” I was intrigued. I accepted. 

I gave the boy three impossible tasks. He completed them in true heroic fashion, bending my words until they fit the possible. I improvised then, asking one last riddle of a task: the sun in a china cup. Gregory figured out the trick nearly immediately, and sat down to wait to complete his work well done. 

The temperature was very low. Few grown men could have survived a night like that no matter how many furs they bundled themselves in. The child stood no chance.

My own tasks were complete; I’d planted a few more seeds. The woodsman observed my handiwork and became upset, as he so often does. He tried again to fight me, but the shadows of the forest kept me safe from his axe. It was nothing we hadn’t done before, but with one key difference: he left the lantern, and  _ someone picked it up _ .

The moment another touched my lantern, the woodsman’s deal with me was broken. He must have realized it the same moment I did, or perhaps he truly cared that much about the dying boy in the edelwood, because he fell easily, distracted. 

I attempted the same lie as before. I should have known not to push my luck with such a flimsy pretense. In the intervening years, I should have come up with a better one.

But none of my quick thinking could save me. Not once the boy handed the woodsman my lantern, my soul.

And he blew.

…

That is the end of it, is it not? Yet here I am, speaking to you.

I will share with you a secret, and this one is no lie.

The Unknown is a place of forgotten stories. Tales of the supernatural or mundane, people who once existed or once nearly existed, who have since been lost to time as I myself was.

But I am here now, and this is not the Unknown. I died in the land of the forgotten, and so I am here in the world of the remembered.

In a way I cannot explain, for I cannot know it, Wirt and Gregory returned home.

In their memories, in their dreams, they have brought me with them.

And just as you are seeing me now… they will see me, and my flame will not be so easily snuffed.

One way or another, I shall make them both mine again.

**Author's Note:**

> Plot stuff referenced from the comics.


End file.
